- Introduction
Based on Ernst, Steve's blog "5 ways Big Data Will Change the World", this blog will cover the same 5 ways but in a different perspective than Steve's. According to Steve's Innovation Insights (insights.wired.com), there are currently five areas that Big Data potentially can make a huge impact on, such as medicine, security, urban planning, products and election. This blog will discuss about medicine, consumer products and election.
Big data is the term which was recently invented. The words describe a huge amount of data that is generated every day. With the growth of internet, computer processor and data storage, collecting and processing data becomes easier than before. People collect all different type of data that is available. For example: how people use cell phone or credit card, how they walk, what is their habit, etc. At first, those data seems overwhelm and not very useful. However, when scientists and researchers found a way to clean and process it, the big messy meaningless data now becomes a smart clean useful data. It has been used in such incredible way to change the world and the way we are living.
- Medicine
Ideally, doctors would have a better diagnostic to patients if they have a prediction model which uses records of all patients in the world. Based on symptoms that patients have, this prediction model will predict outcome (what type of illness a patient will more likely have). It will help to detect cancer or serious illness from its early stage. In addition, prediction model in medicine area would be a great tool to prevent and control disease spreading in the future.
Many companies and researchers have recently built prediction model in this area. For instance:
+STEM (Spatial Temporal Epidemiological Modeler): IBM prediction model to predict dengue fever and malaria. The goal for this project is to “combat illness and infectious diseases in real-time with smarter data tools for public health”, specifically dengue fever and malaria. This prediction model uses data from World Health Organization and local weather and environment data such as temperature and precipitation.
+CancerLinQ project is collecting and analyzing data from cancer patient visits. The goal of this project is to "real-time, personalized guidance and quality feedback for physicians” and “find the most effective therapy for each specific cancer patients”. At this moment, the project has collected about 100,000 patient records from 27 oncology practices.
Although Big Data in medicine is still largely unproven its outcome, more and more researchers and companies are jumping in this area. As the result, many medicine prediction model will be created in the near future. It, hopefully, will help human-being to defeat cancer and some other severe diseases.
- Consumer Products
Unlike Big Data in medicine, Big Data in consumer products is being effectively used by giant retail and social media companies, such as Walmart, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. Data is collected from all different type of actions and movements that are made by consumers. Every clicks, every comments are recorded. Those data will reveal true consumers: what they like, how they shop, what they want, etc. As the result, products, prices and services are customized to each individual customers. Moreover, products will be smarter to customize itself to meet customer’s needs. To illustrate, a car that suggests the best route or remind driver about speed limit. Another example is a toothbrush that can learn about customer’s brushing habit and predict his/her teeth’s condition.
Here is an interesting Youtube video would better help to understand the way big data changes in the consumer products industry:
1. The conversion rate
One of the PwC's client doesn't know how their website connect works and what's their website content's placement on the website. How much clicks are involved, and most importantly, what's the conversion to convert the website click through to the actual purchase.
The role of big data enable the pwc's client to better organize and advertise their website content to figure out the best advertise pattern and marketing content for attracting more online customers and sales volume.
The other client of pwc is a US large beverage company. Within the consumer products, the inventory planning is always the biggest issue. The video mentioned that the beverage company used to stock up based on the past sales, seasons, and etc. However, this doesn't work out - they are still facing the overstock problem. As we know, the overstock to particular skus leads to the insufficient stock to the other skus.
Therefore, the big data analysis could be taken place here to learn this beverage company's inventory stocking pattern and predict next month projected sales volume. Different from traditional inventory planning, you don't need to consider the seasons, holiday, or any other variables, because by conducting the big data analysis, it already learned the patterns and consider all these variables, most importantly, there are many other variables that overseen before are also taken into consideration.
Overall, consumers will surely gain a huge benefit, but there would be no privacy anymore because every single products they use will collect their data.
- Election
Election is always a hot topic, especially in America. The biggest and hardest question for every presidential candidates is how to make impact on people, so that they can get more vote. Big Data would be the tool to answer the question.
As we discussed about brands in class, how a brand can influent on another brand and vice versa. We can apply this concept to Big Data in election. One person’s decision would impact on many other people’s decision in voting. For example, in a household scale, a father’s political view can change political view of other family members. In a larger scale, a public figure can make a huge different in number of vote for certain candidates because of his/her influence.
In the other words, Big Data can help to make a different by analyzing person/brand influence. Base on the result, a presidential candidate can come up with different strategies to reach to those “influential nodes” who will be bridges to help the candidate to connect to the massive population around those nodes.
Here is a video clip talk about how Big Data worked in Obama's election campaign and explain if Big Data would influence future election campaigns.
The video basically describes the success of Obama election by utilizing the social media power to broadcast to the right group based each individual's preferences, which successfully turn young Jewish people in Florida, who is known to be the most preservative and the biggest support group for republican, voted democracy. This is very surprising but expected.
Surely, there are many of factors would be taken into consideration for election, but Big Data takes the play since Obama's election and will further being developed to today's election. If the big data can be used in the right place, by using the characteristic of big data to individual's preferences and opinions would definitely changes the final election result. This is also why Hillary started to hire soft engineers in the very early of year 2015 once she decided to be a President candidate.
The earlier she started, the better network would be constructed. The better network leads to better decision and proper information to be distributed. Let's once the 2016 election is done, what would be final result and how the big data help with result.
- Conclusion
In conclusion, according to Harvard Magazine, Big Data is a big deal. It promises to change the world in many different ways.
Following is the info-graphic from www.visualcapitalist.com to summarize what Big Data is and how it can change the world.
(Image source: http://www.visualcapitalist.com/order-from-chaos-how-big-data-will-change-the-world/)
Source:
- Ernst, Steve. "5 Ways Big Data Will Change the World." - Innovation Insights. 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/5-ways-big-data-will-change-the-world#axzz3nr2OirZj>.
- Bedgood, Larisa. "How Is Big Data Changing the World?" - Data Science Central. 8 June 2015. Web. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/how-is-big-data-changing-the-world>.
- Shaw, Jonathan. "Why “Big Data” Is a Big Deal." Harvard Magazine. 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/03/why-big-data-is-a-big-deal>.
- Terry, Ken. "Cancer Researchers Mine Big Data To Individualize Treatment - InformationWeek." InformationWeek. 28 Mar. 2013. Web. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/electronic-health-records/cancer-researchers-mine-big-data-to-individualize-treatment/d/d-id/1109305?>.
- Galvez, John. "Made in IBM Labs: Scientists Turn Data into Disease Detective to Predict Dengue Fever and Malaria Outbreaks." IBM News Room. 30 Sept. 2013. Web. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/42103.wss>.
- Desjardins, Jeff. "Order From Chaos: How Big Data Will Change the World." Visual Capitalist. 29 July 2015. Web. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://www.visualcapitalist.com/order-from-chaos-how-big-data-will-change-the-world/>.
